I love Pokémon, it's my special interest, I've been playing since Gen 1 and have pretty extensive knowledge about the Pokémon world.
However since becoming a communist I've realized that a lot of things are missing from the world, including basic functions on how everything works. Just the presence of police implies there are laws that have to be enforced, which in turn implies people write those laws, etc. We know that there was an industrial revolution, which led to capitalism, being the economic system in all Pokémon regions, meaning all of the contradictions that come with it. There was a war that took place, as alluded to by Lt. Surge, who might actually be from Unova.
In the manga there's the Pokémon Association (PA), a legislative body that determines the laws involving Pokémon, similar to Congress here in the U.S., with each region apparently having its own PA.
In the anime they have the Pokémon Inspection Agency (PIA) that inspects Gyms to see if they're up to par.
They don't explicitly talk about politics and political views (obviously because the series is marketed to kids) but I think exploring these mechanisms could be really interesting, if not for the fact that Pokémon adds another layer to politics because they're creatures with a material effect on the world.
Some people might be more left leaning when it comes to economics and social issues, but might be more right leaning when it comes to trainer regulations.
I'm curious to know what other people think, I'm actually writing a story that explores some of these themes so I'd love to get some ideas!
I've been wanting to do a pokemon fan comic for a long time that deals with this, even before I became a Marxist.
The way the pokemon league works is often very up for interpretation, is it functionally the government, or are things like government elsewhere, but just not mentioned because these are kid's games. Normally in an RPG game, lacking this stuff doesn't matter, but pokemon takes place somewhere analogous to the real world, but is lacking a lot of the structure of the real world. We see things like construction workers and miners using their pokemon to help them with their jobs, but we also don't really see much talk around that. I believe in Diamond and Pearl, an NPC mentions these miners "sneaking" their pokemon into work, which implies that they aren't supposed to be doing that, but it isn't clear what authority will punish them, or if it is actually against the rules, or if it is just frowned upon.
One universal trait of the pokemon games is a general laid-back attitude. People rarely ever seem stressed or overworked, pokemon receive free healthcare (so presumably humans do as well). And if the pokedollars are supposed to represent yen, goods for a pokemon trainer like potions and pokeballs would only cost the equivalent of a couple of dollars.
Additionally, while there are police officers in some of the games, we don't see any organised attempts to stop any villainous teams. Team rocket can take over an entire building to steal their technology and no one tries to stop them, despite their defense being a single sleepy guy on guard duty.
Of course, out of narrative, this can all be easily explained with "it's a kid's game, don't worry about it. It would be boring if the player didn't actually solve problems themselves and had others show up to solve them instead." but that isn't very satisfying for a lot of people. If the devs of pokemon "didn't think about it" then that is an excellent opportunity for fans to think about it in their own fiction.
Exactly! There's so much that isn't explicitly given to us but we know there has to be ways that the world functions... otherwise it just doesn't function.
I can't accept that everything is happy go lucky and no one has any real problems, which is why I like to use the manga for more reference in how the world could work in a more practical sense (ignoring, of course some of the ridiculous nonsense that it sometimes peddles).
Indeed, my (planned and probably never complete) comic is directly inspired by the manga more than anything else, as it tends to have the most substance and also the most stakes and character.